1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to rotary piston internal-combustion engines, and more particularly, to such engines adapted to operate on a hydrogen gas fuel mixture.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
With the growing demands in recent years of emission control and cost reduction in the automobile industry, there has been an increased interest in the rotary piston engine as a possible replacement for the conventional reciprocating piston engine. In a rotary piston internal-combustion engine, a polygonal piston rotates within an epitrochoidally-shaped engine housing, the piston and housing defining between them a plurality of working chambers that rotate about the axis of the housing and cyclically vary in volume as the piston rotates relative to the housing so as to effectively provide in succession a suction space, a compression space and an expansion space. The previously proposed rotary piston internal-combustion engines have been designed to operate on conventional combustion fuels which are injected generally through a single injection port into the working chambers of the engine where they are admixed with air for ignition. Moreover, in the prior art rotary engines, maintaining adequate lubrication of the piston apex seal surfaces in contact with the housing has been a major problem.
The detrimental air polluting effects of the exhaust gases from conventional combustion fuels are well known. Among the various efforts that have been made to reduce the amount of such air pollutants, it has previously been proposed to fuel internal-combustion engines with hydrogen gas, which burns in air to yield water as the main product of combustion and therefore results in fewer atmospheric contaminants. However, these previous proposals of using hydrogen as a fuel for internal-combustion engines all employed conventional reciprocating piston-type internal-combustion engines and suffered because of the various intake and exhaust valve problems and the extreme difficulties involved in producing a uniform explosion mixture in the firing chamber so as to provide an even ignition and allow the full high energy content of the fuel mixture to be utilized.